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In eight illustrated books, elegantly held together in a single beribboned case and featuring work by Daniel Alarcon, Sheila Heti and Nathan Englander, "McSweeney's 28" explores the state of the fable - those astute and irreducible allegories one doesn't see so much anymore in our strange new age, when everyone is wild for the latest parable or apologue but can't find time for anything else.

<p>Margaret Atwood has established herself as one of the most visionary and canonical authors in the world. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories-some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine-explore the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood&apos;s characteristic insight, wit and intellect. The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; &quot;Impatient Griselda&quot; explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and &quot;My Evil Mother&quot; touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love-and what comes after. Returning to short fiction for the first time since her 2014 collection Stone Mattress, Atwood showcases both her creativity and her humanity in these remarkable tales which by turns delight, illuminate, and quietly devastate.</p>

<p>This brilliant selection of essays&mdash;funny, erudite, endlessly curious, uncannily prescient&mdash;seeks answers to Burning Questions such as: Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating? How can we live on our planet? Is it true? And is it fair? What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism? In over fifty pieces Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humor at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds. The roller-coaster period covered in the collection brought an end to the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump and a pandemic. From debt to tech, the climate crisis to freedom, from when to dispense advice to the young (answer: only when asked) and how to define granola, we have no better guide than Atwood to the many and varied mysteries of our universe.</p>

Loving Others, Othering Love is a multi-modal lyric essay that investigates the interdependence of love and racism. It is a text that mines the multitude of ways that each requires the other in efforts to normalize or mask white privilege. Here, Lee marshals her analyses out of such material as Swedish newspaper reporting on racist hate crimes, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Princess Bari, Ovid, and the manifesto of mass shooter Elliot Rodger. Startling in its elegant incisions into the literary, the popular, the public, and the mythological, Loving Others, Othering Love enacts a critical poetics of assemblage in order to reveal the racist duplicity of love. Mara Lee is one of Sweden's most prominent contemporary writers, as well as a translator and scholar. She is the author of several novels and volumes of poetry, including the internationally recognized Ladies from 2007 and award ­winning Love and Hate from 2018. Lee's work mobilizes the paradoxes and confluences that emerge when the physical and linguistic realities of sexuality, gender, and race manifest themselves against the backdrop of Swedish welfare state whiteness, its quotidian power and purported racelessness. She is professor of art, art theory, and art history at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, and guest professor at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.

<p>Margaret Atwood is celebrated as one of the most gifted storytellers in the world. These stories explore the full warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as World War II parade swords. They feature beloved cats, a confused snail, Martha Gellhorn, George Orwell, philosopher-astronomer-mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, a cabal of elderly female academics, and an alien tasked with retelling human fairy tales. At the heart of the collection is a stunning sequence that follows a married couple as they travel the road together, the moments big and small that make up a long life of love -- and what comes after. The glorious range of Atwood&apos;s creativity and humanity is on full beam in these tales, which by turns delight, illuminate and quietly devastate.</p>

<p><b>Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith</b><br/><br/>Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.<br/><br/>Today, George Orwell is perhaps most famous for his iconic novels - <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i> and <i>Animal Farm</i> - but in his own time it was his remarkable nonfiction writing which drew most attention. Kind-hearted, intelligent, often funny, occasionally indignant, always insightful: his essays are some of the best ever written. Among others, this selection includes 'Shooting an Elephant', 'Such, Such Were the Joys' and 'Some Thoughts on the Common Toad'.</p>

<p><b>This volume is an in-depth and exquisitely illustrated guide to the Second Age of Middle-earth, one of the least-explored periods of Arda's history.</b><br/><br/><i>The Illustrated World of Tolkien: The Second Age</i>, is the follow up companion to the best-selling <i>The Illustrated World of Tolkien</i>, and gathers together artwork, charts, and fascinating and scholarly writing from renowned Tolkien expert David Day. Exploring the languages, poetry and elements of the heroic ages of Norse, Greek and Roman mythologies that may have influenced Tolkien's writing, it is a reference guide for any fan of Tolkien's work, Tolkien's world and the imaginative brilliance his vision inspired.<br/><br/>The Second Age is made up of two great narrative channels: on the one hand the rise and cataclysmic downfall of the island-kingdom of Numenor and its aftermath, and on the other the forging of the Rings of Power and the rise to power of the new dark lord.<br/>Tolkien's sources for his Second Age are, of course, as rich and varied as ever and this book delves into some of these influences and shows how the power of Tolkien's imagination is manifest even in the lesser-known parts of his legendarium.<br/><br/><i>This work is unofficial and is not authorised by the Tolkien Estate or HarperCollins Publishers.</i></p>